Fresh from buying traffic info service SMIlink and opening a Silicon Valley R&D lab, Russia’s largest search site is buying display advertising agency Mediaselling, the target company’s boss Lev Gleyzer wrote on his blog, allowing Yandex to bolster display ad solutions on top of its contextual options. Mediaselling sells banners on media sites like Vedomosti.ru, Kommersant.ru, Gazeta.ru and Eurosport.ru. Newspaper Vedomosti estimates the deal at 38.5 million rubles ($1.43 million) – based on a 5x valuation of the company’s 7.7 million ruble ($286,000) 2007 profit. Mediaselling also already sold ads on to Yande’x traffic site, which it augmented with June’s SMIlink purchase.
As Russia’s search space hots up, don’t forget that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) recently bought contextual ad company Begun from the Rambler portal for $140 million. Meanwhile, Quintura, a vendor which offers a visual site search to publishers, says it’s raised a further funding round from Mangrove to expand and is launching in the US with its first American patent. Clients so far there include Maxim and Hilary magazines.
Disclosure: Quintura is a sponsor for our upcoming EconWomen conference in NYC